"Test everything; retain what is good.” (1 Thes 5:21) A laywoman expresses concerns about issues in the Roman Catholic Church to foster positive dialogue by posing and exploring questions.
Please remember that Canon Law says it is not only a right but a duty to question the church. Also, Canon Law provides an over-riding power to the sensus fidelium (sense of the faithful). By this, Canon Law says that if the sensus fidelium (collective of the faithful) reject a law, it is not valid.

It must be “happy irony week” in the Catholic Church because what else
explains all this?

Let’s first enjoy the "America" magazine article’s irony in and of itselt.However, I will preface my comments with this
thought: I work in the secular world as an executive and I’ve also done a lot
of volunteering in the Catholic Church.“Career
advancement opportunities for women” just has never been a phrase I use when
describing the Catholic Church…never…not once.

Sr. Mary Ann’s article highlights statistics indicating the percentage of
women CEOs for Catholic affiliated organizations such as hospitals is higher
than for secular companies.She fails to
mention that those institutions cannot call themselves “Catholic” without the
approval of the reigning bishop, the CEO of the local diocese.How many of those bishop/CEOs are women? The answer is “the empty set.”

Furthermore, many of those Catholic institutions were created by
religious sisters – the same women who of late have been labeled by the
reigning (male) hierarchs as being “radical feminists” as though they suffer
from some incurable terminal disease.So,
I’m trying to get this straight… Women who lead Catholic institutions are not
radical feminists when they can be used as decoys for diverting attention from
the church’s stifling sexism and discrimination?But when those women try to act in any way
with which the local bishop/CEO disapproves, then they are labeled “radical feminists" and fired?Way to showcase those female
leadership opportunities the church offers…

There’s also irony that an article about the virtual cornucopia of church
female leadership opportunities appears in “America” magazine, a Jesuit
periodical…because the Jesuits have precisely zero women in their organization.‘Tis true; the Society of Jesus…an
organization named after a guy whose society carried signature inclusion of
women…does not itself permit women to join.Instead they adhere to a pre-US civil rights era segregationist’s
mentality of “separate but equal.”

And then there’s the irony that the woman who wrote the article takes a
check working for the Society of Jesus.But then Sr. Mary Ann also works as the Media Relations Director for the
US Conference of Catholic Bishops…another group which has had precisely zero
female CEOs.Therefore, in both of her communications
roles, Sr. Mary Ann answers to men.I
guess it’s actually more a case of tragic irony than comical irony that she
whose public voice requires male approval wrote an article boasting about the
church’s advocacy for women.That
perhaps signifies the extent to which male hegemony can impact some people’s
thinking.

But, the most exquisite irony comes from the timing of the article’s
publication - the same week that the Pontifical Council on Culture holds a
four-day Plenary Assembly to discuss women’s culture.The council’s members include how many
women?Oh, that would be zero
again!See, women have advanced so far
in church leadership that a Pontifical Council can gather...completely straight-faced...without women members and feel they are qualified to make decisions about
women.Nothing says “we really value you
gals” like excluding them from the pontifical council that’s going to discuss
them.

I don’t mean to complain or be fussy but let me just give a quick
demographic run-down on the council’s members and you decide for yourself just
how in-touch these guys are with women around the world…There are 13 Cardinals, 5 Archbishops, 8
Bishops, 1 Monsignor, 1 Rector (yes, he’s a priest; did you even need to ask…)
and 3 Laymen.

Since these guys are…well guys…and they wanted to get together for four
days and do nothing but talk non-stop about girls…they had a bright idea.No, it was not to invite women to join their
council as members…what, are you drunk?No, they had some Italian actress make a video asking women to submit
one minute or shorter videos about who they are…because evidently they believe
nothing of importance about women requires more than a minute to explain.By the way, I sent them a link to my blog but
I did not get an invitation to participate in their meeting.

The irony of the 31 all-male membership writing the following statement as the opening
salvo of their working document about women just kind of says it all…“In our Plenary, the invaluable
contribution of our Members and Consultors will allow us to gather some aspects
of women’s cultures in four thematic stages, in order to identify possible
pastoral paths which will allow Christian communities to listen and dialogue
with the world today in this sphere.”You
see, they’re going to “listen and dialogue” about women by not listening to or
dialoging with them.This is clearly
miracle fodder.

That’s really the high-point of the working document.It just goes downhill from there with sexist
ideas and language.

In fairness, I must mention that 7 of the 35 Consultors are women – 2 religious
and 5 laywomen. So the members are 31
men and then there are 28 more male consultors bringing the male attendee count
to 59 as compared to 7 women consultors.I just have this sneaking suspicion that those 7 women have been carefully
vetted and chosen based upon their parrot-like ability to repeat what the hierarchy
says about women.I am not expecting
them to contribute in a way that represents me or women like me or pretty much
the majority of women in the world.

The four themes they will discuss are:

Theme 1: Between equality and difference: the quest for equilibrium

Theme 2: “Generativity” as a symbolic code

Theme 3: The female body: between culture and biology

Theme 4: Women and religion: flight or new forms of participation in
the life of the church

As a woman, albeit one whose voice is not desired to contribute to this
discussion since we have those 31 male council members who are way more
qualified to talk about being female than me, the themes tell me more about the
men who wrote them than about women.Are
you really struggling with the concept that equality can exist within a diverse
population?Do you really think that
women who leave the church (often with the kiddies in tow) are forming a new
way of participating in church when they say, “this place has a toxic sexist
culture that I can’t tolerate anymore?”By the way, there are women who are doing this; they’re called women
priests.You’re not too keen on them the
last I recall.

The theme regarding the female body doesn’t mention anything about
correcting the mountains of theological conclusions drawn from scads of
inaccurate understandings about human biology.Instead it talks about that really pressing woman’s issue…plastic
surgery???And quite frankly, I’ve read
and re-read the section about "generativity as symbolic code" and it truly beats
the ever-loving shit out of me as to what that’s supposed to be about.

So, I wish the council well in its discussions.I imagine its meeting outcomes will be more
a source for entertainment than theological insight about women because it
begins on faulty ground: it’s a meeting about women called by men in a council with
exclusively male membership to provide guidance to an exclusively male clerical
population.If this truly were about listening
to and dialoging with women, it would be led by women, with a majority of
council members as women.It would
consider new ways of being church including female ordinations.It would talk about more substantive topics
related to female human biology than plastic surgery.

Well, I better get off this merry-go-round of irony lest it make me any more dizzy than it already has. But my parting thoughts are these. What were you thinking when you chose the headless woman's figure with breasts and pubic region tied up in ropes as your report cover artwork? Just exactly what message are you trying to convey? Are women's minds so inconsequential to you that a beheaded woman was ok provided her reproductive parts were on full display? Could I please get a psychological analysis read-out on each council members' attitudes towards women because that image on your report cover makes me wonder if you all start from a very, very twisted sick mental attitude towards women.

12 comments:

Frankly, this farcical (I mean, Pontifical) Council makes me feel embarrassed to be a man in the Catholic Church. I find myself shaking my head saying, "What are they thinking?" Then another voice - the Holy Spirit, perhaps - responds, "They're not thinking. That's the problem!"

Incredible that they pick this depiction of the female body for the cover. We should gather a group of women from corporate America and hold a council to discuss the culture of men in the Roman Catholic positions of power.

Things aren’t too bad: according to a Vatican spokesman there is one area of our Church in which in which women are fully the equals of men: that is to say, in responsibility for child abuse. The Tablet of 24 on January 2014 published an interview with the Vatican's representative to the UN, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, in which he was asked about the response of the Holy See on the issue of child abuse. He admitted that “there has been wrong committed” but pleaded in mitigation that they didn’t know that the way they were doing things was dishonest or bad for children; and then went onto attribute such little fault as there was to “the men and women of the Church”. So there you have it: women alongside the bishops, alongside Pope Benedict XVI, alongside Pope St John Paul II, sharing responsibility for a scandal from which the institution may never recover. The door which Pope Francis has said is closed, has been opened just this tiny bit so that our sisters can take an equal share of the blame. Equality at last.

Here's the email that I sent to culture@cultura.va:The illustration of the mutilated body of a woman that you used is atrocious and disgusting. How do you expect anyone to take the Plenary Assembly seriously when you do something that stupid?

I am completely shocked, horrified and scandalized that you would choose this image to illustrate any Vatican document on women. This illustration shows a woman with no head, no arms, no legs, and in bondage.

Is this what the Vatican wants for women????

I demand that you remove this image from your website and from all Vatican documents. And perhaps explain yourself: how on Earth could you possibly think this is appropriate??

They choose the blonde on the video for a good laugh. Tell us your story lickety-split, they have her tell us. They choose this mutilated body in bondage just to further enjoy themselves. They are mocking women with doubletalk and using the "faithful" Sister Walsh to do it. Hatred of women and children is entrenched in the clerical culture. It is how they like it.

Before demanding they remove the image, I'd like to find out what message they were trying to convey. Maybe that that is the way they want to keep women. Maybe that that's the way women have been kept, and they are looking to reverse that, to enable women to be whole and fully alive and vibrant as God created them.

About Me

I am a single mother of three who from the eyes of the Roman Catholic hierarchy is in full communion with the Church. But I question if any woman is capable of being in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church due to clericalism, sexism, and the marginalization, and emotional abuse of women.
I hold a master degree in theology from Loyola (Master of Pastoral Studies, M.P.S.). I am not employed by the Catholic Church but rather am an executive consultant.
Some ask if I want to be a priest. We are baptized priest, prophet and king. I feel I am more called to exercise my prophetic voice than a priestly one.
(Artwork supplied courtesy of one of my daughters.)